By: Victor Gischler (writer), Paco Medina (pencils), Jan Vlasco (inks), Marte Gracia (colors) & Joe Caramanga (letters)
The Story: The war between the vampires and the mutants is joined in full.
What’s Good: If you’re willing to suspend disbelief and logical thinking (more on this below), the plan that the X-Men come up with to combat the vampires is kinda cool in a teenage fanboy kind of way. That may sound like a lot of qualifiers, but if you can’t suspend disbelief, go with the flow and enjoy the sheer spectacle, you probably are going to have a lot of problems with most superhero comics. So, the concept is cool and kinda dumb all at the same time……and that’s okay.
I do like that the mutants seem hard pressed here. When they reconfigure Cerebro (groan) to see vampiric DNA, they are pretty much surrounded. It can get a little old seeing the X-Men about to be wiped out, so this was a bit of a wrinkle: The vampires want to incorporate the mutants to strengthen their ranks now that the vampires are united and out to rule the world.
It was also just a lot of fun to see Wolverine and Colossus go on a vampire hunt together. These are THE two original heavy hitters from the post Giant Sized X-Men era and I thought Gischler did a nice job with their banter, including Wolverine offering to fastball special Colossus. You forget how much these two have been through, so it was nice to see them alone.
What’s Not So Good: Taking off my rose colored glasses, the plan the X-Men have hatched is pretty dumb. I’m sure it will work just great to revive Dracula so he can take down the vampires from within. Actually……it will work perfectly for the first story arc, but then he’ll turn on the mutants (surely). Oh well, there’s your first two story arcs.
The X-Men aren’t the only one with a stupid plan though. If the vampires wanted to get rid of Dracula, why did they just cut off his head and store it separately from his body? How about put him through a wood chipper? And did Marvel release the Death of Dracula after this first X-Men arc was plotted out? “Hmm… But to do that we’ll need Dracula to be dead first….. I know, we’ll release a one shot!!!!!”
I don’t like what’s going on with the art either. Just because the story has vampires, why does the art have to be soooo dark. I know they’re creating mood, but I’d still like to be able to see a little better. And, is drawing fight sequences a lost art? The aforementioned Wolverine/Colossus/vampire scene has a fight that is picture perfect for some actual sequential art rather than just 5 random panels from the fight. I really like to see art where you can follow what happens in the fight. I understand you cannot do that when you have massive fights with 50 characters, but this only had 3 characters and it was a missed opportunity.
Blade didn’t really add much to this issue. I know it’s vampires and that’s why he’s guest starring, but then do more with him. I strongly doubt the mere presence of Blade on the cover moves many more comics.
Conclusion: Fun if you unplug your higher reasoning and just roll with it. Not essential reading unless you really like the X-Men though.
Grade: C
– Dean Stell
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Conclusion